


On the Run

by imma_redshirt



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But Spock is still a Vulcan, F/M, Gen, M/M, More characters to come, No Starfleet or Federation, abducting humans, car crash, disguised as a Romulan, like confused and angry doctors, who just wanna go home
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8191693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imma_redshirt/pseuds/imma_redshirt
Summary: Leonard McCoy did not expect to be abducted by pointy eared aliens while driving home from Houston. He didn't expect it at all, and he's not very damn happy when it happens. He's also not happy when he ends up on the run with one of those aliens who turns out to be not so terrible as the rest of them.Still terrible, but not as terrible.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Methinks an appropriate song for the soundtrack to this story would be "Run Boy Run" by Woodkid. Like, the entire soundtrack. Just that song. Mostly.
> 
> Also, I have no beta, so all mistakes are mine and mine alone. If you spot any mistakes, please let me know. Thanks!

The light had been following him for 20 minutes, now.

McCoy glanced at his rearview mirror. He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel and bit his lip. What exactly is the protocol when you realize that you're being followed by something in the sky? What was he supposed to do? Didn't seem like something the cops would take seriously. Police wouldn't be much help anyway. By the time a patrol car made it all the way to the empty road that McCoy was taking, the light or whatever was following him would have already… done whatever it was that lights from space did to lone drivers in the middle of the night. He didn't really want to think about it. 

McCoy didn't know what was going on, goddammit, he didn't even know if he was just overreacting. Or underreacting. Or if he was even dreaming the whole thing. 

_What was he supposed to do?_ He'd already done all he could to ignore the damn thing for 20 minutes, hoping it would just disappear behind some trees or something. Or reveal itself to be a helicopter and just fly off somewhere else instead of sticking on his tail. Or maybe even a far off satellite just crossing his path until it winked out of sight as it continued to circle the Earth. 

Actually, he'd only _noticed_ the thing 20 minutes ago. Who knew how long it had _actually_ been following him before he saw it? He'd been on the road for a good two hours, just about, since dropping Joanna off at her mom's new place. When he'd first spotted it, he'd just dismissed it as a very, obnoxiously bright star. Virgo, he'd figured, or Mars, or Venus, or some other shiny celestial body that he had no clue how to identify. He was a doctor, dammit, not an astronomer. And when a doctor who only practices astronomy when his eight year old daughter wants to go stargazing before bed sees a bright round thing in the sky, he thinks _'Venus or whatever is especially bright tonight,'_ not _'Hey, that's not a star, that thing shouldn't be there, I'm in damn danger, aren't I?'_

Up ahead was a turn in the road. On either side stood towering Texas Ash and Oak trees, dark masses swaying against the night sky. McCoy knew that there were no houses nearby, not on a road like this, that wound around thickets and hills and fields with dry brush. A ranch or two, maybe, but miles away. McCoy followed the curving line of reflectors on the asphalt, hands tight on the steering wheel. He stared hard ahead, stealing only one glance at the mirror. 

The light finally, thankfully, disappeared behind the tree tops. 

McCoy let out a breath and laughed. A damn star then. Just a bright star shining right along his path home, a glittering point in the sky right above the Texas roads that led his way back to Georgia. 

Driving late at night for hours played tricks on weary minds. He knew that. He _knew_ that. After the fourteen hour drive from Atlanta to Houston, he'd stopped only briefly at Jocelyn's place to say goodbye to Jo, trade polite words with his ex-wife over coffee and pecan pie, and say goodbye to Jo again with a long hug and a pinky promise to call every other day.

He'd done his best to ignore Jocelyn's dubious stare.

Then he'd climbed into his Jeep, tried not to march back in and take his daughter _home,_ started the engine, and left.

McCoy looked at the dashboard clock. 10:25. Two hours and twenty-five minutes, then, since he'd left Jocelyn's house behind. One and a half hours out of Houston. Traffic had been hell in the city, leaving him even more frustrated than before. Now, alone on a dark road the GPS had suggested he take, he sat hunched in his seat, back aching, eyes burning, with a damned light in the sky following behind--

Wait.

McCoy did a double take. There, smack dab in the middle of the rearview mirror, was the light. 

It was the size of a basketball, now. Before, it had seemed as small as baseball.

_What in the goddamned hell?_

McCoy rubbed at his eyes. He looked again. The light sped along over the treetops, less than a mile back.

It was gaining on him.

It hadn't been moving that fast earlier. It had barely seemed to be moving at all. Now movement was evident as blotted out actual stars, made the tree tops bend in it's wake.

McCoy hit 80. The light seemed to be hitting 90.

"What the _hell,_ " McCoy said outloud. His knuckles were white on the wheel.

He wasn't imagining this. This was real, whatever the hell _this_ was. 

He flailed one hand to the passenger's seat where he knew his phone was. Ahead, the road was an empty, straight path. He couldn't see any other cars on the single lane, east bound road. Where the hell _was_ he? Where had that blasted GPS led him? That was going to be the last time he used the damn thing. Why hadn't he brought a map!

His hand closed around this phone. He flicked it on, dialed 911--

The phone beeped at him. _3% battery. Phone will shut off--_

Of all the goddamn times to run out of battery, it had to be when a growing light was chasing him down some abandoned Texas road.

At that moment, several things raced through his mind. The first was this: only minutes ago, his phone had been at 80% battery. Of that he was certain. The GPS could not have drained it that fast.

The second was this: the light was now the size of a kiddie pool, and the space around it seemed to be taken up by a barely visible, oddly shaped, _something_. The sky was not visible around it, and it was bigger than his own vehicle. It was a UFO. He was being followed by a goddamned UFO.

The third thing was this: _He had to be fucking dreaming._

Except he wasn't, because the fourth and final thing that ran through his mind before he crashed was this: there was a man in the road, illuminated by his headlights, and he was holding a gun.

McCoy was going to die.

It wasn't a thought. It was a simple truth, more of a feeling, like the gut wrenching feeling he'd been hit with when he saw Jo watching him from the steps of Jocelyn's house, rubbing away tears as he drove away. Or the heartbreak he'd felt when he realized he wouldn't see her again for a month, would only hear her tiny voice over the phone and see a grainy, laggy version of his daughter's face over video chat with his ex-wife lurking somewhere in the background--

Ahead, the man raised his weapon. Behind, the light-spaceship- _whatever_ sped up until it loomed over the Jeep and a low hum filled Len's ears.

McCoy slammed on the breaks. The Jeep skidded forward, the wheel spun in his hands, and suddenly the road ahead disappeared and only wide, heavy Oak trunks filled his vision.

The Jeep rocked and crashed through underbrush as it swerved off the road. McCoy struggled to keep control, cursing through clenched teeth as tree after tree came precariously close to rendering his Jeep into twisted metal with himself stuck inside.

He jerked the wheel to the side, and where he expected there to be enough empty space to drive through, another man stood in the way.

McCoy swerved. And a low hanging Ash blocked his way.

There was no moment to think as he swerved again, yelled, felt his seatbelt dig into his shoulder, heard and felt his Jeep slam into the sturdy trunk of an old Ash, and he was thrown to the side. 

Pain exploded against his head, and darkness met him.

\------------------------------

A voice growled in his ear.

Someone was pawing at him, pulling him out of wherever he was--his bed? His office chair? No, his Jeep, he was in his Jeep--tugging his limp arms until he was free of whatever had been restraining him. 

He groaned. The voice growled again, and the hard hands dropped him to the cold, wet ground. 

Len felt dirt and leaves sticking to his cheek. His arm, aching and wet with something warm, was trapped beneath his body, pressed into the ground of--where was he? He was out of the Jeep, he knew that, but where? Why wasn't he in his Jeep? What… What had happened?

Joanna. Jo was in the Jeep. His daughter. 

A sense of urgency opened his eyes. Something had happened, something terrible, he had to get his daughter out of the Jeep--

\--a crash, there had been--

Something grabbed his shoulders. He could see the base of a tree trunk, and shards of broken glass right before his nose. And a boot. A dark boot, close to his cheek. Someone, someone was helping him.

"Jo," he groaned, and tried to rise to his knees. "My--daughter, she's--"

The voice growled something--not English, not any Earthly language that Len had ever heard--and the hands pulled him up.

Hot, heavy pain raced down his side, and somewhere beyond the haze of his concussion, the medical knowledge that owned so much of his mind told him he was--well, he was fucked.

The hands lifted him, hefted him until something hard pressed into his midsection and he found himself hanging limply from someone's shoulder. They weren't gentle, whoever this good samaritan was, but Len didn't care. As long as they got his daughter help, he didn't care.

"My daughter," he said again, and tried to raise his head. 

The man carrying him said something in that strange language, and the sound of a second voice startled Len. More than one person. And they were talking around him as if his daughter wasn't stuck in the damn Jeep--

\--but she was with her mother, not in the Jeep, Len had been alone, hadn't he, what was wrong with him--

The voices conversed for a moment longer, and a hand rested heavily on his hip, and suddenly they were moving. Len groaned. His head throbbed, bile threatened to surge up, and his entire left side felt so many pains that he could write an entire paper describing the agony of each and every one.

"Wait," he said, or at least tried to, because as soon as he spoke the person holding him hefted him higher and the sound that came out of his mouth was a cross between a groan and a whimper that he promised to never ever make again. He shut his eyes and tried to will the pain away. Mind over matter or whatever.

 _Goddamn you,_ he thought, pain overruling gratefulness. 

They finally stopped, and McCoy was granted a split second of relief before whoever was holding him began to lower him to the ground. This time, they were a mite more gentle, and McCoy kept his eyes shut against the pain as he was laid out against something hard and grainy--asphalt? The road? They were back on the road?

But the light. The light, the ship _thing_ , had been there. It had driven him off the road, and those men who had stepped in front of his Jeep--

Two men, holding guns, blocking his way--

Ah, hell.

He hadn't been saved. He'd only been taken by the very men who had kept him from escaping.

Well, fuck him running. Goddamit.

God _dammit!_

He licked his lips--bad idea, that was blood on his lips--and tried to come up with a plan of escape. But before he could do as much as consider crawling away with enough injuries to land him in the ICU, a hand pressed on his face and held him down.

He gasped. He tried to swat the hand away, but the pain weakened him so much that he might as well have waved a handkerchief at the man. A second hand pressed against his cheek, and fingers splayed across his temple, his forehead, near the corner of his gasping mouth.

He could hear a distant voice speaking in that horrible language, but a second, emotionless voice drowned out the first, right in his head, as if it were his very own thoughts, strangely comforting and a stark contrast to the handling he'd received earlier.

He was struck with the sudden feeling that someone was in his head, standing in there off to the side as if his brain was a off-limits living room with plastic covered furniture and the understanding that you'd better not ruin that carpet or you're in for it, and they were speaking to him.

_All will be well. I will not let them harm you._

McCoy's heart leapt into his throat. This was not normal. This wasn't right. People didn't just speak into your head. This wasn't _right_.

_You must trust me, Leonard McCoy._

Before McCoy could ask the mind intruder how the hell they knew his name, warm, deft fingers felt along his shoulder, rested there for a moment, and pinched.

 _This isn't over,_ was his last thought before complete darkness overcame him.

Whoever the hell they were, they were going to get the lecture of their damn life when he woke up.

**Author's Note:**

> Also also, considering my record of leaving stories without updates, anyone who cares would be surprised to know that chapter 2 of this story is well on it's way. Like, in a week or so. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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